On Henri Lefebvre's 'The production of Space'

I really struggled reading the whole I thing I must say. I only managed to read about 10 pages in one go and then always needed a break so it took me some time to read through the whole text so I hope this all makes sense. In the second chapter of ‘The production of space’ by Henri Lefebvre, he talks about ‘social spaces’ , what they are and how they came into being.

‘(Social) space is not a thing among other things, nor a product among other products: rather, it subsumes things produced, and encompasses their interrelationships in their coexistence and simultaneity — their (relative) order and/or (relative) disorder’

Lefebvre then takes Venice as an example to describe his idea of products, production, art and works. He starts off with describing the concept of production and says that ‘

There is nothing in history or in society, which does not have to be achieved and produced’

but that nature provides resources and therefore cannot be seen as producing things (I don’t agree with him on this but I come back to that later). Nature creates. It

‘supplies only use value’ as everything ‘either returns to nature or serves as a natural good’.

He then starts talking about the main subject of the chapter, space, and argues that it is an on-going production of spatial relations, it is not static nor a ‘pre-existing’ given. Space to him is the result of something that is produced materially.

 

‘Social space is produced and reproduced in connection with the forces of production (and with the relations of production). And these forces, as they develop, are not taking over a pre-existing, empty or neutral space, or a space determined solely by geography, climate, anthropology, or some other comparable consideration‘.

 He also thinks that there is a connection between capitalism in the modern world and the creation of

                                                                                ’abstract spaces’

which to him triggered social fragmentation and hierarchy as well as a homogenous culture. The spread of capitalism on a global basis to him affects cultures and environments by suppressing the local differences and conforming them to modern examples of how spaces should be like. Lefebvre says that a split between ‘micro’ (architecture) and ‘macro’ (urbanism) should have let to more diversity but that opposite happened instead.

‘repetition has everywhere defeated uniqueness,(…)the artificial and contrived have driven all spontaneity and naturalness from the field‘.

I do agree with him that there is a decline in uniqueness in modern architecture especially in urban spaces. If we look at the famous (and I think successful) examples of public spaces like piazzas and squares, there are only historic places popping into my mind like Piazza Navona in Rome, the Old Town Square in Prague or even our own lovely Trafalgar Square. All the modern (European) examples that I have been to are actually quite horrible and cold, they do not have anything unique about them, they could be pretty much everywhere in Europe. Try placing Piazza Navona somewhere else, yeah right, that doesn’t work. But I don’t think that’s to do with capitalism. It’s to do with globalisation, which of course does have a connection to capitalism as we can now buy pretty much anything from anywhere. But I think that the advanced technology has played the major part in the globalisation. It is now easy to live wherever you want and fly there in a couple of hours. This caused a mixing of cultures, which then caused an adjustment and a conformation of several different cultures. However, I am coming back to Lefebvre and his idea that nature does not produce but creates. As mentioned above, I do not agree with him on this. A flower for example is a product in a way as well. Nature does not just exist. It is produced by many different factors. A flower does not just bloom, it needs sun, water, soil, bees etc, it is produced by these factors, if one of these factors is missing, it would not exist nor bloom. Lefebvre says that we produce things to satisfy a certain need and that nature doesn’t do this as it

‘knows nothing of these creations (…) A rose has no why or wherefore; it blooms because it blooms’

 But that is not true. Everything exists for a reason, nature provides, and I dare to say produces, things that are needed. Everything interacts with each other, that’s the circle of life (great now I have the theme song of ‘The Lion King’ stuck in my head). Nature produces everything repeatedly, over and over again, which is, according to Lefebvre, a product. Venice on the other hand is a work to him. It was created, not produced as it was ‘born of the sea’ and not planned to look like something particular; it grew like this over a long time. However, he then says that it has now pretty much become a sort of art as the people now see it as a

                                                              ‘source of pleasure’

which threatens the city with extinction. This is actually true. The huge amount of people who visit Venice each year have actually caused many problems, such as disturbing the ecosystem of the lagoon and overcrowded spaces that turn Venice into a ‘living museum’.